


Until You Belong to Me

by Cherith



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:10:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherith/pseuds/Cherith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sorrow is a demon trying to get away from her master, and she enlists the help of an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until You Belong to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Original Fic Big Bang Community on LiveJournal. A companion piece to [Blind Denial the Long Way Down](http://cherith.dreamwidth.org/5993.html) (DW) | [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/129428) written last year. LJ user [inferiarecoming ](http://inferiarecoming.livejournal.com) made a fantastic fanmix for this story, and you can find it [here](http://theworlditgoes.livejournal.com/6660.html)
> 
> Many Warnings apply: religious subversion, something very much like dubcon, femslash, graphic/violent scenes, fire

When Sorrow was a girl, she had a different name. She dreamed of it sometimes. It was there on the tip of her tongue when she woke, but as is the way of the small things left from dreams, she could never quite bring herself to remember it. She is known as Sorrow, though it is not quite her name either, not in the way that is complete or indicative of who she is. Or what.

She does not mourn that first name. Whatever it might have been, she does not have it in her to mourn anymore. If she had tears to shed they would be black and thick as pitch and as dead as she.

Yet, even the dead must sleep.

\---

She woke in tangled red sheets and a long, slender, pale leg over hers. With a slow undulation she rolled to her back, sparing only a quick glance for her mistress as she slid out from under the other woman’s weight and the web of sheets between them. There was a soft sigh from the bed as she stood, though Sorrow didn’t look back once she had freed herself. If she looked back, took even a second to pause over the sleeping form of the woman she called mistress, she called lover, she called her savior, then she would want more than leaving, to crawl back in bed beside her. If she looked back, she would want to bury herself again beside the woman with pale skin and hair black as night - and a heart as well.

So she did not look, that was how she had landed there in the first place. Not that first night, or the many that followed them. No, those first nights she was grateful, would have sung praises - might have, though she could not remember them - at the woman’s ringed and painted toes. Those nights she went happily to the woman’s side and her bed. Now, it felt as though it was only duty; some lingering sense of honor and nobility. Or perhaps it was only forgiveness that compelled her to the woman’s bed. Sorrow had long since forgiven her. Perhaps that was the penance she paid for the betrayal she had already planned. And for the nights of planning, the nights of hatred for the woman she once loved.

The room was not so dark as it might have been on other nights. The ever-burning torch near the door had not been removed before they had gone to bed. With that light, it was simple enough for Sorrow to carefully pick her way across the floor. She swept a hand down as she moved to grab her robe from where it had fallen when it had been pushed from her shoulders. The rest of her clothes were there somewhere as well, though she cared not to pick them up. It would take too long and make too much noise to get dressed completely.

Leaning just next to the torch bracketed into the wall, was a grim looking scythe. The length of it was black and silver, bone grips and decoration laid into the wood. The sharp metal head gleamed orange in the firelight. Sorrow wrapped a pale hand around it, fingertips sliding between gilded bone protrusions on the shaft as she pulled it close.

At the door she turned and looked towards the bed. She licked her lips, dry and tender from rough kisses and sharp teeth. Her mistress stirred but only a quiet, dreamy, little moan escaping the woman’s lips. Sorrow shook her head, wisps of her silvery hair crossing her bare shoulders.

“Soon, Thea,” she whispered to the sleeping form of her mistress. Her lover. Her savior.

The door opened easily with only a quiet hiss of air. Sorrow moved through the doorway and pulled the door closed behind her, hearing a soft click as the lock caught. She murmured a quick protection over the door and as she felt the magic slip into place, she slid her arms through those in her robe, shifting her scythe from one hand to the other and then pulling the robe tight across her waist and cinching it shut.

\---

Though Sorrow could not remember her own name - the first one, the one that her parents must have given her - she remembered who she had been. A small, lonely girl with frighteningly pale skin (frightening at least to the adults in her life, though she didn’t remember them either) and hair much the same: like it belonged to someone far beyond her years, white and long and straight. She had been at a church - a fine one with great golden crosses and large statues and large beautiful windows full of so many colors that Sorrow had liked to stand in them, and see how all the colors danced along her skin. She remembered these things, because that’s where she had been when Areltheia had found her.

Areltheia had stalked through the grand hall of the church, a black cloak billowing behind her like a giant shadow, as flames dancing along the church’s columns in her wake. The place crumbled under her command and she sent her fists through crosses and pews and paintings as she made her way to the Bible on the dais near the back wall. The fearsome demoness had rent the good book, letting remnants of pages flutter down from the dais like snow from the scene of heaven along the ceiling.

Sorrow had been standing in the shadow of one of the church’s great windows, staring at the colors when she was forced to the ground by great choking gasps as the smoke snuck into her lungs. It had felt though her chest would burst, as if the fire was inside her too- swallowing her from the inside out. Her tiny hands pressed against the stone floor as she stared at the woman - awed by the force she wielded against the book and at the flames that licked up the pillars and the wall behind her, directed by some unheard or unseen command.

And, Areltheia had stared back.

It had been then, that Sorrow, a tiny slip of a girl all flame-reflected skin and tattered clothes had picked up the long end of a broken cross and, though her chest burned at the effort to draw a breath, she had run at the woman. She wanted to defend the place she thought was home with every small inch of her. She pulled up to her full and inconsiderable height, defiant and proud and with a boldness that defied her age and experience, she stared at the dark-eyed woman. There were shining, pearlescent drops of blood, like tears, below the woman’s eyes that spoke to the girl of sorrow and grief and defeat.

Sorrow tossed aside her makeshift weapon and ran, arms outstretched to envelop the woman in a hug. There was something in the woman Sorrow recognized or wanted to be a part of, or with. Even now, what remained surprising was that Areltheia had compassion left in her. While the demoness tore at the church, burned it from the foundation to the cross on the roof’s apex, she saw a small thing like Sorrow and felt something for the girl. She had seen something young and innocent and had taken her home - to teach her, to train her, to tell her all the things the Church would do to a demon like her if she were ever found, and more still to little girls raised by one.

Areltheia had never asked her name but had assigned her a new one. That too was a name Sorrow no longer remembered. It was years before she had ended up in Thea’s bed (no longer Areltheia when they were so close- so intimate). But it was supposed to be a gift, a treasured memory and as she was consumed, body and soul by the woman she loved - had given herself to - she had renamed herself. Something not chosen for her, but chosen of herself, of a memory of that first meeting between them. It had rolled from her tongue a prayer, a grateful gesture for the night and for her life: _Sorrow and Grief Defeated in Lover’s Tears_.

And her demoness, her lover, had cherished it.

\---

By morning Sorrow stood just inside the wrought iron gates of a graveyard, her hand grasping the bars, poised to leave darkness and death behind. The location of the graveyard, did not matter to her, only that she was there and on the other side of the gates was a decidedly human place, a place where Thea was not. Dead leaves crackled under her bone-tipped and violet boots as she stepped forward and swung open one of the gates. They shuddered, opened with a sickening metallic squeal and she slid through the space left as soon as she was able. Just on the other side of the fence, the air felt warmer than it had inside and the shadows of death retreated.

If she had turned to look back at the graves behind her, she would have found fresh, green grass illuminated by golden sunlight and clear skies. The night had faded completely leaving a strange new day before her. She still felt the strange caress of death and chill winds through her skirt and high collared shirt, and she pulled the cloak clasped over her shoulders tight around her. The clothes didn’t ward off death, hard to keep away something that emanated from deep within but she felt better to make a gesture so... human.

She walked from that place, her shoes clicking in an odd cadence against the one created by the gilded cane under her left hand.

The days of a demon in the sunlight were harsh ones. She was wrapped in dark colors, her hair down to help create shadows, the cane to help her balance (and only as a glamour for the scythe she really carried) and her cloak kept her own chill wrapped away from those that passed her by. Still she was both cold and hot and though she knew she was attractive enough to look upon, people purposefully stepped out of her way and avoided meeting her gaze. The shadows she created on the sidewalk writhed beneath her, hidden as she fell into step with a throng of people. Contemptuous and playful little things, they writhed in in the sunlight, lifted skirts and held onto toes, tripping passersby.

It still felt strange when she reached the edges of ritual or blessed lands, the holy grounds of the cathedrals, synagogues, mosques or temples that humans worshipped so steadily, so guiltily, so compulsively, that she did not have to walk around them. Her feet were tentative each time, as her one memory, the one where she had tossed aside a broken cross in favor for a demon - her demoness, her lover, her beautiful and exotic and unpredicatable flames - kept her uncertain of whether the land, or the god that governed it might let her pass. Each time, she walked with hesitant steps across paths of stone or grass and each time, she made it to the other side without so much as a shudder.

It was different this time, she told herself. It would be different as she strode across the brick path, each brick engraved with a name of either a person, or a family. Her heels and cane beat a tattoo on the bricks as she made for the front door of a stone church, small and simple, with a tall wooden cross on the roof. She stood in the shadow of the building, her own fearsome shadow quiet beneath her- dormant almost, under the watchful eye of some god, or its home.

It took some effort to push open the narrow blue door at the front of the building, at the top of a long flight of stairs, built of those same strange engraved bricks. As the door swung open, she felt the force of a breath catch in her throat like smoke and her chest constricted, tingling and burning her skin. She exhaled as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior and the numbness that threatened, slid from her, snake-like, sending a shiver down her spine.

“Welcome,” said a pleasant voice from somewhere inside behind a pillar or a corner or some other hidden place.

Sorrow let the doors close behind her as she took a few small, careful steps inside.

\---

She felt like a child, so long had it been since she had set foot (or any part of herself) inside such a building. The one from her memory had not been her last. Indeed, Thea had seen to instructing her in all the ways a tiny young thing might take down such a building with innocent smiles and a well-placed patch of darkness and death. Later, after she had become Sorrow, Thea had taken her to churches under glamours and webbed penumbras and laid her all pale flesh and moonlit hair against balcony and dais, cross and confessional and with tongue and fingers made Sorrow cry out with all the names of god she knew.

Sorrow’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior and she took another echoing step towards the voice she had heard. She swallowed, pushing down thick air with the bobbing of her throat and brought a forced, “Hello?” to her lips.

There was rustling noise, of paper or pages, or the dead leaves she had stepped on in the graveyard and after a moment- in which she considered leaving, an arm appeared around a corner. It held up a single well-manicured finger, a gesture to wait and she smiled, not at being told to wait, not even at the absurdity of the seemingly disembodied hand- arm, but at the almost playfulness of the gesture - in as much as one can assign such an emotion to a body part.

And then she nodded at it, a perfunctory gesture, a habit, the ritual of greeting and responding to a notice that passes so often between people, but less often between such small gestures. Sorrow let out a gasp at her own muscle-memory, her own habitual nature and then it was followed by her own sharp laugh; a laugh that echoed off brick and stone and got lost somewhere in the wooden rafters along the ceiling. The arm disappeared around the corner from which it had come and she felt the aching urge to follow it, to see what dark hall it disappeared into.

Before she could even take a step, torn as she was between some perverse sense of duty and obedience in such a holy building and the curious and predatory nature that had placed her as Areltheia’s left hand, the sound of heels clicked on the floor and a woman stepped around the corner.

“Mercy, but you do look cold.”

A svelte and immaculately fashioned woman, all perfect pleats and carefully coiffed red hair, rushed forward. She smiled, a kind and knowing mother’s smile and grabbed for Sorrow’s elbow with slender, manicured fingers.

Sorrow pulled her arm way, eyes flashing with unchecked disgust at a touch she had not welcomed, or invited.

“No.”

The woman took her hand back as if she had been harmed at the ferocity of Sorrow’s movement, her rejection. A few steps backwards and the smile Sorrow identified as pretense was in place, red lips pulled tight over white teeth.

“I’m sorry, dear,” the woman said with more affectation than apology. She folded her thin fingers together and held them delicately in front of her waist. “What brings you to _Holy Name_?”

Sorrow’s eyes flicked to the floor where her shadow wrapped lazy coils around the woman’s ankles. When she brought her gaze back to the woman’s practiced smile, she almost felt a rumble of Thea’s laughter inside her. _Holy Name_ , was the best they could come up with when demons like Areltheia could have corrupted - maybe had - dozens just like it and no one would remember a place like, Holy Name. She tried to quiet the ridicule of her imagined demoness with explanations that she was sure it had a place- a city or a parish or a street name even that would distinguish it from all the others. But, she was not convinced and so neither was the hysterical wisp of Thea in her thoughts.

She cleared her throat. “Do you have a priest- a... “ Sorrow searched for another word but the woman was quick to correct her.

“You mean the Pastor, dear? Pastor Brady?”

Nodding, Sorrow met the woman’s questioning and appraising gaze. “Yes. Would I be able to meet...”

Her words trailed off again, not searching, but investigating- not wishing to be corrected a second time. There was no memory of this building that she could conjure for comparison, so she used what she could see beginning with the prim woman before her. Crosses- minus a crucifixion, faded paintings of eagles or trees or sheep, photographs on a wall in neat ordered rows and columns of families, wooden pews in the distance complete with faded maroon books in pockets on the back. It only took her a moment to evaluate it all, to make a judgement about the type of place, the type of _church_ that she had entered.

“... him?”

\---

The woman, _Cheryl_ (once they had been introduced), bade her wait for the pastor in a cramped hallway on a short, uncomfortable wooden chair that had been painted a color of green that looked like mold, or rot. She was not alone, if she cocked her head to the side and looked past the curtain of her own bright hair, she could see the back of Cheryl’s head. But Sorrow didn’t need to look. From her rotting wood throne, she could hear the clacking of the woman’s long, painted fingernails against a keyboard and the rustle of her woolen dress as she shifted uncomfortably in Sorrow’s presence.

The strangeness of it, her sitting patiently like one might in any old waiting room, waiting now for the pastor of a small, strange little church. She smiled crookedly at the thought. Her hands gripped tightly around her cane and she tried not to be anything other than amused as she wondered how long this lowly human would keep her waiting.

It wasn’t long. Only minutes, Sorrow thought, like might matter to her, as though she recognized such minute measures of time regularly. She didn’t.

“Well, hello there.”

A cheerful, rolling and lilting voice came out from the office across from where Sorrow sat. She looked up to find an attractive and portly man, dressed in a chocolate tweed suit, complete with tan leather patches at the elbows. He was already extending a thick hand in her direction as he crossed the few steps between them.

When she stood, the smile plastered on his face broke, faltered for the space of one of his heartbeats. His hand trembled but he did not retract it when she returned his previously jolly smile with a predatory, toothy smile of her own. She lifted one of her own cold, pale hands to place it in his, ladylike. She could feel not only the tremor in his hand, but his pulse, the flow of blood beneath his skin and the warmth it created, the life it gave him. Briefly, as she often did when need demanded she touch living, human flesh, she wondered if they could feel how thick her own blood was now, how cold and black and viscous it was.

“Hello,” she returned, her voice low and soft. She tried for innocent but knew the idea must already be lost on him, even as he pulled his hand back, his eyes were wide and the smile he returned to his face was less certain than it had been.

“You are... Pastor Brady?” she asked, even though Cheryl had already said he would meet with her, she asked as though she hadn’t seen the picture of him on the wall outside the office, or heard the name from the secretary’s painted lips.

“I am.” His voice nearly cracked, brittle words belying the smile and the nod he gave like everything was still alright in his little church.

Slowly, she tapped her fingers on her cane. It was a distraction for her, from the simpleness of this man and of the fear she so easily caused him. But, it was an entrancing one for him, a reason to drop his gaze from her dark eyes and so he no longer needed to wonder why there was no light in them at all. The fear was still in him, evident in the few stuttering breaths he pulled into his round chest.

“I was hoping we could speak,” with a sultry lilt in her voice and a seductive lift of her chin, quirk of her brow, “in your office?”

He nodded, too quickly and Sorrow’s flicked her eyes to the woman she knew was watching their exchange. Cheryl’s eyes were on her: the fullness in her lips, the curve of her breasts beneath the silk, the same tapping of her fingers against the head of the cane. She smiled and delicately licked her lips, her tongue even in the dull shadows of an ill-lit church office was a dark, violet-hued thing. The woman started and even with the space between them, Sorrow could see the shudder of excitement, of lust, run through her body. When her gaze returned to the pastor, she found his eyes on her again, his mouth gaping. She saw the want- that hunger for her, was also in him.

It was a thing she didn’t use often, that attraction, that need that compelled humans one to another. But here - as it had the many times Thea had shown her the same thing in other houses of worship - it amused her to do so. Though the rutting of humans together was less appealing, she imagined how if she left them alive, the pastor and that woman would fall together, despite any commitments or relationships, when she left. She could do that to them and when she left, she would laugh at their compulsion.

When she canted her head in question he closed his mouth and nodded again. “Oh- of- of course,” he stammered.

With her free hand, Sorrow reached for his elbow and applied a light pressure to set him in motion and he let himself be turned back towards his office door as she pulled him forward with her own steps.

\---

The pastor’s office was a mishmash collection of tacky sculptures and a gratuitous amount of quotes: embroidered, cross-stitched, wood-burned, painted and calligraphied biblical quotes. It seemed to Sorrow that nearly everything was some sort of reference to their bible, their god, a constant and overbearing reminder of the work that he was supposed to do in that office. Sorrow looked at each kitchy knickknack with distaste and stepped softly across the spiral carpet to the man’s cluttered desk. She lifted her cane and slowly, but carelessly, swept the length of it over a corner in front of the pastor’s seat. As he sat, he watched his things tumble from the desk to the carpet in front of his feet and when his eyes flicked back to her face, there was anger there but also the quirk of a smile tugging at his lips.

“Now, miss... “ He gave her a confused look, cheeks reddening. “I’m sorry miss, where are my manners. I didn’t ask after you name.”

Sorrow chuckled at that. Manners, now, after the little show she had put on for him and his secretary just moments before. She smiled, leered really, as she used her free hand to hike up her skirt, lifted a leg and then slid herself up onto the newly empty corner of his desk.

“My name is about as important to you as those dreadful little statues,” she said. She hoisted her cane again and thrust the end of it into his chest, stopping just as the button of his dress shirt cracked beneath the rubber grip. “What is important, is what you can do for me.”

His eyes went wide, jaw dropping as he stared down at his chest, an exhaled breath, pushing the broken button pieces out from under the cane. She pulled her cane away and laid it on the desk, toppling several other trinkets. In another breath, Sorrow raised one of her legs, the split of her skirt revealing a bright expanse of skin as it fell away, and hooked her foot into one of the arms of his chair and pulled him, chair and all, close as he could be.

“Pastor Brady, I _need_ two things from you.” She slipped her other bone-tipped booted foot between his legs, sliding the point of her heel along his thigh. _Though I want neither_.

It was seduction at it’s most base, more forceful and the man before her seemed barely conscious, confused and hesitant to move against her or call out for help. She slipped loose a bit of the careful glamour she held in place, her skin brightening like moonlight, and the shadows behind her on the desk, uncoiling and rising from their place to create roiling mass behind her. Her shadow became another version of herself, ill-defined and blurry, but with her size and shape, fluttering pieces that represented her clothes and hair and in its hand was not the head of a cane, but the long shaft her her own glimmering scythe.

The pastor whimpered as the shadow took shape unsure whether to look at the pale woman with her foot resting a pointed toe over the rising bulge in his slacks or at the shadows that seemed to flicker into existence, slithering towards him with and unnatural and evil, sort of grace. Sorrow could hear the change in his breathing, the hitch as the large man fought to suck air into his lungs. She leaned forward, applying slight pressure to her foot, and her shadow moved too, a swift motion that brought it to the man’s side. Sorrow smiled at herself or what passed for a poor, umbral facsimile of herself. She slid her foot to the side, around his belly and as her leg pressed into the side of the chair, she pulled herself onto him.

She did not bother to kiss him, touch him tenderly, or whisper consoling words into his ear. Instead, she slipped her slender hand between them to pull at his belt, his zipper to free him from clothed constraint. He moaned as her hand brushed against him, and he stared at her, eyes glassy with lust and confusion, lips puckering and searching for hers, his large hands against her back to pull her closer.

Her shadow lengthened, a single tendril sliding behind her to push the pastor’s office door closed. She could hear a woman’s small-voiced protest from the other side, but paid it little mind. Softly and more tenderly than she would be, her shadow ran wisps through the man’s hair, caressed his skin, found openings in his clothing and crept inside until he was all but covered in traces of her- of it. Covered him until under her own hands she felt nothing but the chill, ephemeral softness that was her own fleeting shadow. Where she wanted him covered, it thickened to nearly tangible darkness at her touch.

There were two things she needed from him. Two things she needed, but did not want. It didn’t have to be him specifically, only what his position, what his faith granted him. She would take it from him, as she had been taught to take it by Thea in houses of worship all over creation. She would take it, and if she was wise and clever as only Thea could have taught her to be, she would use against the woman she called once called savior. Only for this- only for this, only now, would she bother with the sweaty, sticky, fleshy parts of the human race. Only for this would she sink onto this man, sink her teeth into his flesh, bury him inside her, until he had nothing more to give. Only for Areltheia, would Sorrow do these things, only because she knew she must.

\---

Sorrow ran a finger along her lips and caught several drops of blood that threatened to trickle down onto the pastor’s clothes. She licked at it, savoring the taste and a thrill that settled just under her skin as all that had passed between them coursed through her body. Rotten and ichorous as she must be on the inside, living fluids, fresh from their source were still somehow, intoxicating. She shivered as she pulled away from the man, silk skirt settling back around her legs as she stood and a cool caress against her skin as her shadow fell back into place, feeling as though it snuggled against her, nuzzled like a cat settling to sleep once more.

“You’ve been most helpful, Pastor Brady.” She laid a blood-stained fingertip against his cheek before turning to lift her cane up from his desk.

He moaned and his body twitched limply. He would live, provided Cheryl did her part in retrieving him once Sorrow left the church, though she could think of many- perhaps too many- times where she had left men and women like this, sated, yet empty, then expired.

As she exited his office, she winked at Cheryl, who turned in her chair as the door clicked open. The woman’s lips were a thin, angry line of too-bright lipstick and Sorrow could do naught but laugh at the disdain, the disapproval evident on the woman’s face. Mentally, she swept through her memory of the pastor’s office, trying to remember a wedding ring or a family portrait. When she found none, she dropped her own shadowed gaze to Cheryl’s hand which was indeed also, without a ring.

“Ah.”

Sorrow laughed again and canted her head, sliding a hand around her neck to brush aside her hair. There, she could feel it, a scar- her own small brand- a reminder- a belonging. Her blood-tipped fingers ran over the mark, feeling at a sight she would always remember, the swirl of scarred tissue that Thea had created on her skin. Blood transferred from her finger to the mark and she watched as the older woman’s eyes too, moved to stare at the blood, at the one place her skin would always be marred.

It was chaos on her skin, darkness and swirling shadows beneath the blood as her skin struggled to pull the fresh blood into it, to heal, even if she knew it to be a futile attempt. The woman whimpered and rose from her seat, legs and arms trembling. She reached for the phone at the corner of her desk as Sorrow let her gaze drop away, and began to make her way for the doors out of the church. Cheryl’s hands clumsily knocked the receiver from the desk and she fumbled with it, forced her eyes away from Sorrow’s retreating form, even if the symbol danced still in her mind, in front of her eyes.

The mark, the blood seeping into her skin as though it might do something other than sink beneath it, served as her reminder. It was why she did this, it was why she moved now against Areltheia. It was why she came to a church, to a place of worship and took the seed of a strange and unappealing man into her body, why she drew his blood into her mouth and let it sit, a strange heavy pit in her stomach. Thea had marked her, had marred her, had _branded_ her, as a reminder of the control she had over Sorrow. The mark showed, in Sorrow’s mind after all her years of service and obedience to the demoness - an undeserved reminder - how little Thea trusted her. And to what lengths an ancient and crazed woman would go to protect what she thought belonged to her.

By the time Sorrow made her way to the heavy front door, she could hear the beats of Cheryl’s footsteps making her way into the pastor’s office. There was a scream a moment later, the moment Sorrow lifted her cane to keep it from slowing her steps and made her way down the brick pathway, back to the sidewalk.

 _Sorrow had sent a message home to Areltheia: the broken, twisted and lifeless form of the demon, Lissandra of the Waking tides. “Liss” as she was called, had stolen a trinket and her life, or the remnants of it had not been the price demanded for the theft, but after a long search, it was the debt that Sorrow had collected._

 _She returned home, a smattering of Liss’ ichorous blood still stuck on her clothes, in the ends of her hair, and edges of her skirt sopping and trailing water as she crossed the grand entrance. Shaking droplets from sleeves and the curve of the scythe in her hands she looked up to find the room and those beyond, crowded. One could always trust Areltheia to use any situation as a celebration. Such flattery, Sorrow had thought, to have a crowd of onlookers and hangers-on to surround her when she arrived home, successful._

 _But as she entered the main hall, ignoring the drops of water and blood that fell from her as she picked her way through the crowd to Thea’s side, she found Liss already there. Waiting. Laughing. The both of them nearly doubled over with hysterical laughter, just at the sight of her._

 _At first, Sorrow said nothing, eager tongue pressed against her lips, if only to keep from telling Liss what she could really do with that trinket. Not that it had seemed of such little value when Areltheia had sent her after it. She started to move passed them, to go to her rooms and bathe and be pleased at least that the search was ended and Areltheia would be content with her - no matter how it stung to see them together._

 _Then there was an elegant red boot in her way and Liss’s voice was behind her- calling her name, teasing and gesturing. Sorrow turned to face the pair of them and the crowd too was focused on them, on her and what she might do._

 _It seemed as though it should be easy enough to ignore her, to be the one she knew Areltheia would rather have in her bed. She got to be the one that was most trusted among all those Thea had rescued, had saved, had loved. Loved still. Her eyes went to Thea’s then, looking for recognition, for sympathy on the demoness’ pale and hollow face. She found none. Waiting for her instead was only cruelty, madness and laughter, and Sorrow’s hand twisted around the shaft of her scythe, bone scraping skin from her fingers._

 _She growled. And in the time it took- which was no time at all- for her shadow to lengthen and cross the space between them, she charged Lissandra of the Waking Tides, though she did not intend to win- not a second time- not with Areltheia watching them so intently._

 _But win, she did. The beautiful and fearsome Lissandra of the Waking Tides, all shimmering gowns and laughter like raindrops, died at her feet- a final death- a complete death._

 _For her ‘insolence’, Thea said, for her ‘intolerance’, for her ‘inability to take a fucking_ _joke’, Thea branded her in front of the audience of onlookers and well-wishers and hangers-on that had come to her party to see how the demon queen lived. When Thea was done with her, she left her on the ground, skin rotting and peeling at the place where her new mark lived. Her head was pillowed against the motionless and sopping corpse of Liss beneath her._

 _And when Lissandra’s body finally collapsed, all the magic gone from it; only water remained and even that was not enough to quench the fire against Sorrow’s neck._

\----

It had started that night, when Sorrow had discovered how little she felt as though she belonged to Areltheia, despite the demon’s hold on her and the bed they sometimes shared. Reflecting on their recent years it seemed more rote behavior, built of some sort of fascination Sorrow had built in her mind of the terrifying woman that had both burned her home and saved her from it. Years of dedication and service could be wiped from existence in a single thought if Thea sought to do it and yet, she had pulled Sorrow to her, whispered affections and desires and though Sorrow knew she wasn’t the only one, yet each time she felt as though she was.

Areltheia, even in claiming her life, had made her _feel_ alive.

Sorrow didn’t think she would ever be able to forgive her for that. And more, for the years of love and service she had lavished on her savior from that burning church only to have them unappreciated, ignored, and worse: mocked. She had been mocked for her unyielding servitude.

Sorrow continued along the sidewalk. The blood inside her roiled with the thought of Thea’s betrayal. She had gone out on Thea’s orders to find a trinket, a small thing of hers that had gone missing- stolen, she had meant. Stolen by a jaded lover, stolen and brought and hid amongst humans.

She wondered what it meant about her, that she, rotting and dead flesh kept alive by the blood and love and magic of a demon, had human friends. _Had friends._ That she had anyone on this side of the veil that she would call on in a time of need seemed a preposterous idea. Yet, her feet carried her, an odd marching gait with a cane tattoo against the sidewalk, right up to the house of peeling blue paint and a clattering noise from a door near the garage.

It was strange to think she had once, not known that noise- would have never recognized it were it not for the humans on the other side of that door. She nearly hummed, skin tingled at the memorized phrasing and the trilling of a voice as she faded into the shadows and passed into a room where there should’ve been none.

Her shadow crept into the room long before her, faint tendrils of ink crawling along the concrete floor, tugging at carpet and teasing shoe laces free and wrapping oh- so- slowly up a microphone stand. She watched and tasted, and once licked at the scruffy cheek of a man playing a keyboard. There was a brief hitch in the song, a note missed at the cold of her shadow against his face and she recognized even that, not there- not _that_ note- but that he had missed one at all, with the chill of her, and it brought a smile to Sorrow’s lips.

She watched them play, the five of them, who she called friends though she should have no right to do so, but allowed her to, all the same. Each of them she knew by name, by sight and some, two- the red headed singer with the freckles that Sorrow swore connected in the constellations, and the piano man who fingers caressed the keyboard in front of him as though it had all the weight and importance of ivory keys set in a grand piano- she knew by feel, by taste.

The fresh death, the coursing of blood under her skin, made it easier for her to stand there, hidden in the shadows for as long as she chose to listen. It gave her shadow a leash she had yet to test the full limits of, even in all her years. There was a wildness to it and spirit of its own, as it spun away from the microphone, spiraling down and collapsing for only a second on faded rug under the band, before it moved along. She could feel each thread of the carpet, each heavy beat as it nested inside the large drum and vibrated with the kicks of the pedal against the skin. She didn’t always tell her friends, _her friends_ , when she watched them practice, couldn’t explain the pleasure she and her shadow found in the sounds and the tastes and the feel of their music.

Sorrow had once tried to explain. Mark, sweet, naive and nimble-fingered Mark, had given her a strange look at the idea that their music was anything more than five friends in a basement banging away at instruments and wasting away their lives. She knew he didn’t believe that anymore than she did but when Liss had taken everything from them - when she had taken everything from them, by taking away Liss - it made him feel better to believe they were worth so little. Their limited success was only a fluke, an unorchestrated force of nature and when it was over, he was just as content to be done with it.

Whatever the truth of the impact of their music on anyone else, Sorrow knew what it did to her. And so she watched and she listed and she _felt_ every note, every beat until she was numb with the exposure of it all.

Sometimes, like this time, they stopped before she was ready for them to, before she could feel full of the sound and empty of the shadow, and unsated, she let the darkness return to her, coiling around the end of her cane to rest. She slid into a chair and waited as the glamour fell away, to be noticed, though these days it never took long for one of them to land a gaze her direction.

\---

“What do you need from us?” Cate asks. Responsible Cate. Always willing to lend a hand, lend her voice, always ready to meet a new friend, or save an old one. She leaned back in a large, stuffed chair of a pillow, and twirled a strand of flame-colored hair around a finger and Sorrow sighed.

She had already pulled back her hair, exposing her brand to the five of them, and they had each leaned in and had a turn to look at the rings of raised skin, a spiral of shame and loathing and had they been any other people, she would’ve had to fight the urge to run through through with the sword in her cane. But, they weren’t any five random strangers and though the urge was there, it was very distant and the hand on her cane barely shifted at the thought.

They had each winced in pain, at the thought of the mark she bore and how she received it and the idea that she had fought Liss a second time. Mark had grabbed at her hand only to pull it back a moment later with a flush in his cheeks and an awkward smile. They would offer themselves only because she had saved them once, though she had not done it for them, not really- not at all. She had done it on Thea’s orders to retrieve the item Liss had taken- stolen- or been given, she was not longer sure, other than to know that it hadn’t been for them. They had been deceived by the demon that wore Liss’ skin, had been given things the water could not give them.

Lissandra of the Waking Tides had only ever reflected what was at the heart of the humans under her sway.

These five young humans, the ones she called her friends, the ones who called themselves a band, Tinamou- as if they were a collective, a small bird to share their song with the world- had _wanted_. And Liss had reflected the perfect rise, to a fame they so desperately thought she could give them. Without her, they had fallen, but not so far as they might have had Liss been able to have their way with them over years instead of mere months.

“I only need you to know,” Sorrow replied at last, taking Cate’s chin in one of her cold and pale hands, though Cate did not flinch at the touch, or the chill against her skin; she merely smiled.

“There isn’t anything we can do to help?” This from Christian, who did not sit so close to her as the rest of them did. He had drawn a chair from across the room and sat some feet behind his brother, Ray, who sat near on a nearby couch.

She shook her head slowly and her shadow, as though it had woken up from a nap, trickled across the floor towards Christian. He did not see the web it made on the floor, curling in around the rubber of his sneaker soles, but when it slid beneath the cuff of his socks she could feel him shudder at it’s tickling embrace. Grinning at him she called it back to her with only a click of her long fingernails against the cane. She played as though he trusted her like the others did, even when she knew he did not. A part of her hoped he would see it for what it was, a spirit of camaraderie, her apology for the things she had done, the physical blow she had struck to him so many months before. Someday, he might forgive her, but he kept himself apart from the rest and she felt sadder for it.

Still he would not stay his hand if there was help to offer, and maybe that was all the sign she needed that he might close that space between them yet.

“I need to do it on my own,” she said, focusing her dark eyes on Christian. “She will know if you are there, I cannot know what trust she had with Liss, nor what secrets she may yet keep. If you are there, she will not hesitate to use you against me.”

Then why- why did she tell them? She frowned, the curve of her lips wrinkling her face and narrowing her eyes. She trusted them, though her words were true enough in that they could not help her. Well, not all of them could help her. But she would not keep these from them, it was a part of their story, even as she was a part of theirs, and something in the tapestry would reflect that even when Areltheia’s days were ended.

“I can help,” Cate whispered and it was so faint that Sorrow suspected that only she could have heard the words, no matter how close the others might be.

Her eyes swept from Christian to Cate’s emerald gaze and Sorrow fought not to nod her head, not to agree, not to give Cate entrance into the quarrel between her and Thea, as though she had not come here to ask that exact thing. She wanted to build to it, to find Cate alone and ask in private when the rest would not hear, would not want to join in. She should have known- would have known if she had better formed her idea or the request she wanted to make. Not that it would have stopped Cate from concluding what she needed before she asked for it, because that was Cate’s own special purpose, the ability she had she did not share with her friends, but that Sorrow had seen in her from their first meeting.

She swallowed, her throat thick with the favor she didn’t know how to ask and Cate understood.

\---

No one wanted to leave, but Cate ushered each of the four men from her house, one by one, until only she and Sorrow and her shadow remained. Sorrow hadn’t moved from her place in the chair at the far end of the room, and when Cate had show the last man through the door (of course it had been Mark, he had been concerned, _sweetly concerned_ for her) she pulled her pillow to Sorrow’s feet and sat. There too, was a look of concern and worry and Sorrow could almost not bear the emotions of her friends.

But, Cate sat and put her hands on the bone tips of Sorrow’s boots and even though there was no real way to feel it, there was a warmth there that sunk into her skin at just the thought of her touch.

“What can I do?” Cate said. It was an echo of earlier, but there were no men, no unskilled and frail humans between them now, it was only Cate and her flame colored hair, pale skin with dots like stars upon it and her knowing green eyes. Knowing. That’s what Cate did. It was her skill, her talent... her curse in life was to _know._

Not that she knew all things.

But, she knew too much. It was no mortal gift.

Still, when she asked, Sorrow fixed her with a questioning glare as thought to say, _don’t you know, can’t you guess?_

Cate shook her head and whispered, “You have to ask.”

There was an edge to Cate’s words and Sorrow reached a hand down to her, cupped the other woman’s chin in her hand and tilted her gaze up to hers. Her thumb caressed along Cate’s jaw, finding smooth, soft skin under her own rough and calloused fingers. Cate’s green eyes met hers through long, blonde lashes.

“I need you to ask me what you want to know,” Cate clarified. “It only works if you ask.”

“I didn’t know,” Sorrow said, voice pitched low as a whisper, as an echo. Cate had never explained her talent to her, other than acknowledging that she had one and it had always seemed a bit more ethereal and uncertain.

Cate shrugged freckled shoulders rose and fell and Sorrow slid her hand down to thumb at the thin strap of the red headed woman’s dark blue tank top. She looked down at Sorrow’s hand and sighed wistfully, even as gooseflesh rose on her shoulder. Sorrow canted her head, hair falling back to cover her neck and the brand on it. She kept the forward motion of her hand pulling at Cate’s arm, letting her skin slide between her fingers until she had a hold of Cate’s hand and brought it to her lips.

She whispered against Cate’s fingers, “I want to know how it will go. If I’ll live, if she’ll die, and whether or not she knows I’m coming for her.”

The other woman’s gaze followed as Sorrow pulled at her hand, letting it go, letting Sorrow take it to her lips and shuddering at the warmth of Sorrow’s breath in contrast to her cold touch.

“I’ll try,” she said softly as she looked once more at Sorrow. “I don’t know her, I won’t see her- or I don’t think I will. But, I’ll try.

“I still can’t tell you how it works... not exactly.”

“That you try will be enough, Catherine.”

She smiled at Sorrow’s use of her full name, a blush settling into her cheeks as she pulled her hand away and placed it in her lap.

“Everything is in my room.”

\---

Like the basement, Cate’s room had an old, worn rug of many colors with threads coming up around every loop of the braid and Sorrow resisted the urge to spread her shadow across the length of it. Cate had gathered herself onto the rug, sitting with her legs folded and arms hanging loose over her legs, and her head bowed while she just sat and breathed.

Sorrow watched.

She sat awkwardly at the edge of Cate’s bed as though she had never laid on it, as though she had not spread Cate beneath her and teased and tasted at her dotted skin and tried to see if the freckles tasted differently than the rest of her. She thought they did, even if Cate strongly disagreed. Sorrow waited while Cate did whatever it was that gave her the ability to see and know, and to reach into that undefinable thing that was the future. For all her strength and knowledge and granted abilities, Sorrow had been taught long ago by Areltheia that the future was woven, was threaded together and could not be unravelled.

That Cate was somehow connected and could reach through the veil of the world and touch that tapestry and bring back some knowledge- any knowledge, it was mesmerizing in a way that her body wasn’t. Not that Sorrow couldn’t be distracted by both- and was as she sat on Cate’s bed and swung a boot into the air, child-like and impatient. She wanted both.

More than that, she wanted the freedom that came with both.

And strangely, even though it was possible that Cate would return from wherever it was she went when she searched for the future, that she wouldn’t know anymore than either of them did already; Sorrow was already confident. While she would not bring the members of Timamou with her and felt a twinge of weakness just asking Cate to indulge her, that she had Cate to ask, that she had humans she considered friends- it was as much a revelation as anything in her unlife had ever been.

It was an hour before Cate’s eyes opened with a strange, nearly audible force and stared at her as though she could look through her. Cate murmured something, but her voice was contorted and hollow and the words weren’t right at all- they weren’t anything Sorrow recognized as a language. She swallowed, hard, blood pulsing at muscles in her throat and seeping through the skin until she could taste the salt and iron of Pastor Brady on her tongue. Sorrow’s limbs were frozen in place, as though all the blood had finally been used up or turned solid under her skin.

She managed to croak Cate’s name and it sounded odd, heavy and strangled and burbling with blood.

… “Sorrow?”

She watched as Cate crawled on her towards the bed, used her hands to climb up Sorrow’s legs until she was standing in front of her, pressing her pale, but warm hands to her as if she was searching for someone that had gone absent. Sorrow didn’t feel like she had gone anywhere. She could feel the warmth of Cate’s hands on her skin, but it didn’t sink in, and like the lightening of skin with fingers pressed against it that darkens when the pressure is removed, Cate’s warmth didn’t last. Her eyes were fixed on the place where Cate had been and the movements of her friend so close to her, were large and blurred as her vision struggled but couldn’t refocus.

“Sorrow, are you okay?”

No. No, she wasn’t okay and Cate stepped away from her and there was a trail of mixed fluids of red and black as her hand came away from Sorrow’s lips. Cate stared at her, then at her hands, then was gone from her line of sight for long moments, returning with fabric. There was an unsteady hand and the feel of a towel against her lips, her chin, her neck as Cate wiped away what had bubbled forth from her mouth when she had tried to speak.

It was nearly a half hour before she could speak again. An hour before she could move.

\---

Cate held her close long after she could move, long after the need to run and to fight an unknown and invisible force left her. Cate had pushed her to the bed, swung an arm and a leg over her and pulled her close, her body pressing to Sorrow’s back as close as limbs and clothes could allow. She whispered lyrics to her songs, both ones Sorrow knew and didn’t know, against hollow at the back of Sorrow’s neck created by her prominent spine and the long curtain of her hair that Cate pushed over her shoulder. Her breath was warm as it reached Sorrow’s skin and it kept her warm and flush with the heat.

Cate _knew._

But, she wouldn’t say what she had seen in all that time with her eyes closed and her body folded and stationary. Sorrow had not the strength to press her for answers, had not the strength or the will to leave the embrace of Cate’s body, or the softness of her bed. So, Cate held her and Sorrow closed her eyes until the shock of it faded, and the image of Cate’s emerald eyes thrown open by some malevolent force was replaced with the need to turn, to see them caring and focused and kind.

For all her heavy and constraining clothes, Sorrow slipped under Cate’s arm easily, turning on the bed to face the other woman. Cate’s eyes opened slowly as she moved, and she smiled and murmured a pleased noise as though she woke from a pleasant dream. Cate moved her hand as Sorrow slid closer, her own arm going around Cate’s waist, fingers splayed against the small of her back. She didn’t breath, didn’t move, just met Cate’s sleepy gaze with her own.

When she woke, it was with Cate’s breath in her ear.

…”Sorrow? It’s dark. I don’t want you go to go, but I _know_ you have to.”

 _I know you have to._

She felt stiff under Cate’s arm, body rigid with sleep and the lack of any fluids but her own, even less after what had happened before. But she rolled forward, arm encircling most of Cate’s waist and pulling their hips together, their breasts, her head tilting to steal a kiss from the faded peach of Cate’s lips. There was a thick darkness, cold and oppressive as it slid inside her boots and up her skirt and found it’s way up the curve of her spine. It wiggled and pressed against her, sending her forcefully into Cate’s embrace.

“Catherine,” she whispered. A kiss on her throat, her tongue trailed between the freckles on her neck and shoulders and she kissed again at the pulse she found beneath her lips.

“... You need to leave. I _know_ -” Cate’s breath hitched as Sorrow’s fingers worked their way from her back to her hips, feeling at the hem of the shorts Cate wore.

“Tell me.”

A breath. “No.”

Sorrow reached for the waistband of Cate’s shorts, slipped her fingers beneath the elastic and used her hand to push it down over one hip. She kissed at Cate’s ear, alternated between sucking and small, quick nips against her earlobe and then a breath, her own, cold against Cate’s ear and a shudder went through her that Sorrow could feel in her arms.

“Tell me.”

“Sorrow,” Cate murmured though it was half a moan, breathy and needy. But she followed it quickly with a more determined, “No.”

With another push, another pull of the waistband, she had Cate’s hips bare, and Cate wiggled her legs, to slide the shorts down and off. Sorrow’s hand was between Cate’s thighs, cold against her skin, but gentle and with smooth motions until she could feel the soft curls and warmth between her legs. Her hand rested there as her shadow moved swiftly and with curling tendrils from behind her to slip around Cate’s ankles.

“Will you ever tell me?”

It was a gentle question after it, as she waited for an answer, Cate walked her fingers to Sorrow’s skirt, carefully lifting it by inches.

“No.”

“Then, may I stay?”

“No.”

Cate would make her go when it was time. When she _knew_ the evening was ending and Sorrow wouldn’t be able to stay any longer, when if she stayed Thea would know what was coming. And who worked against her. But, there, she didn’t think of Thea. Only smooth skin next to hers as Cate pushed and tugged until the garments between them were gone. Sorrow’s hand remained still. Waiting.

“Will you turn me away?”

“No.”

\---

Cate slept soundly, curled with knees nearly touching her bare chest as Sorrow slipped carefully from her bed and collected her cane. It was not yet morning, but the tenderness in her joints- the stiffness in her movements, had her shuffling as she left Cate’s room.

The pre-dawn air was chilling and she shivered as she reached back and pulled the hood from her cloak up and over her head. The clasp was shut high around her neck, but she pulled the corners together to block the crisp air. Tendrils of fog clung to her as she walked from Cate’s house to the graveyard two silent, suburban blocks away.

To cross from sacred burial grounds in the human domain to its foul and corrupt mockery took only a few steps. Finding her way on the well-memorized path to Areltheia's residence required little more than a single though. The air inside was still and quiet and the keep was dark upon her arrival home.

 _Home._

No matter how she felt or what she had done- what she felt prepared to do, something about it still felt like home. More so than the phantom memory of a burning church, or a warm, human embrace could ever be. It was as though Areltheia’s presence was soaked into every inch of the building, so no matter where she stood, the demon was always watching. Sorrow’s heels clacked loudly through empty rooms, each open space as cold and driftless as she felt inside.

She had barely crossed the expanse of the grand hall when she heard a gentle tapping, not unlike claws on stone. And with the few seconds she had, Sorrow gathered her shadow and wrapped it around herself. A beast snuffled against the far wall, pacing, as though it could smell her already. Little could ever set her legs trembling even as she stood her ground, like Areltheia could, yet she stood, rooted to the stone as a roar reverberated off the pillars and rattled the bone chandelier overhead, as the beast charged.

It was a dark, a roiling mass of shadows and muscle and as it heaved itself up from the ground to attack her, all claws and darkness, she smelled putrid, rotting flesh. Sorrow choked on a breath as she fell under the weight of it’s attack.

Her shadow shrugged off the brunt of the attack as its claws and teeth sunk into her skin. She bled, but it was a slow, thick trickle of dark fluid, dripping lazily onto the stone. The creature raged, a beast of fury that seemed more ravenous than her decaying body could satisfy. She snarled at it and there was a beast inside her too, all sharp edges and cold metal.

Sorrow turned, prepared to heave the creature off of her but with the next moment, it was a light weight and nothing at all to move the sickness of it. It sunk towards her and wisped between her fingers. She felt over-crowded as it bled it’s rotted, hulking mass into her and the stone beneath and it darkened her eyes until there was nothing left to see but the cold edges inside her own mind.

She was consumed or subsumed by whatever it was and somewhere, there was a whisper like a breeze in her mind of Thea’s voice a quiet reminder of who she was, of where she was, of the demon she called home.

 _Home._

There was warmth all around her, like the sun in the afternoon when every inch of her skin wasn’t covered and there had been blood pumping in her veins. The scent of burning wood and oil and the heavy acrid taste of smoke threaded into her. When she opened her eyes, there was a wooden cross in her hand, and flames surrounded her in nearly every direction, save one. And at the end of the corridor of flames, a beautiful woman stood, pale skin and ebony hair and with a fearsome visage that called to something deep inside her. Sorrow, a multitude of rainbows reflected on her skin, was called like an invisible hand pushed against her back, and she walked through the open spaces and embraced the woman.

Her savior.

The woman kissed her, with tender and needy lips that curled around her own. _Home_ was warm and soft as her eyelids fluttered, then closed and low in her throat moaned a name neither of them knew. She returned the kiss like she could never remember another.

\---

Cate woke with a hole in her heart where moonlight should have been. She jerked up from the bed and stared at the two dark red and curling memories of faded tears on the pillow next to hers. Her fingers traced the swirled markings and like a fading dream, a memory tugged at her through the pillow to her fingertips. Her chest ached and as she put her feet to the cold rug beneath her bed, she spasmed with great choking coughs.

Her lungs felt as though there was no room for a free breath and she fell to her knees, her hands the only things between her and the floor. Black dots swam in her vision as she gasped, trying to push air between the acrid smoke in her throat and lungs.

When she fell to ground the first fresh breaths finally seeping into her system, her cheek pressed against a dark stain on the carpet. She brushed at it with her fingers, trailing around the edges just at the corners of her vision as though willing her memory of its origin to return.

It was like there was a hole in her lungs when the flames went out and she could feel it burn to ash on her tongue. The sun left drops on her floor, tiny sliver shapes that warmed her skin and made her heart ache as though they too traced a shape in her.

Her ear to the carpet, a sound not unlike rushing water swam in her head and the pain her throat subsided and sleep claimed her again, there on the floor.

\---

When she was a girl, had a different name. She dreamed of it sometimes. It was there on the tip of her tongue when she woke, but as is the way of the small things left from dreams, she could never quite bring herself to remember it. She doesn’t have a name now, and a sweet voice whispers in her ear to tell her that soon- very soon, she can have one again.

She does not mourn that other name. Whatever it might have been, she does not have it in her to mourn anymore. If she had tears to shed they would be trails of flame on her face, dying to ash on her cold skin.

Yet, even the dead must sleep.


End file.
